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If an ESPN report proves correct, Isaiah Thomas #0 of the Denver Nuggets could return from injury by mid-Feburary. (Photo by Justin Tafoya/Getty Images)Getty

As the February 7 NBA trade deadline rapidly approaches, the rumor mill is cranking up, with the game-changing potential of high-profile stars such as the New Orleans Pelicans’ Anthony Davis and the Washington Wizards’ Bradley Beal fueling news and speculation about the landscape-altering moves teams around the league will attempt to make.

Along the Rocky Mountain foothills, however, all is quiet on the western front.

The Denver Nuggets organization appears unlikely to make much noise at the trade deadline, in no small part because of how much the front office and coaching staff love the players on the current roster – not only as individuals, but how they have meshed together in a team culture of positivity, growth and importantly, winning.

“We have 17 guys right now who very much represent what we want to be all about as an organization, as a city, as men,” Nuggets president of basketball operations Tim Connelly told Nuggets360 in the lead-up to the preseason last September. “I'm proud of the work ethic, the grind our guys have put in.”

With a 31-14 record that marks a franchise best at this point in the season and puts the Nuggets at second in the Western Conference just a half game behind the defending champion Golden State Warriors, Connelly has every reason to be proud of his crew.

But to the frustration of both the Nuggets organization and fans alike, Denver has yet to see what its young core, anchored by rising stars Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, will be able to accomplish at full strength.

A Roster Deprived of the Chance to Reach its Potential

The Nuggets have missed the most player games to injury of all teams in the NBA this season, and as a consequence have deployed eight different starting lineups in their 45 games so far. Denver’s original starting lineup, in fact, has played a paltry grand total of 46 minutes together this season, with Will Barton having missed all but six games due to a hip/core injury, as he along with Gary Harris and Paul Millsap have combined to play in just 70 of 135, or 52% of possible games.

Gains the Nuggets have made in the growth of their young players, however, have come at the opportunity cost of being unable to discover the optimal performance of their roster at full strength and having the chance to cultivate more seamless chemistry in the lineups head coach Michael Malone will put on the court in the playoffs.

As such, Connelly and his front office must be chomping at the bit to see the full potential of the roster they have rebuilt over the past several years – with players brimming not only with basketball upside but with the particularly high quality of character the Nuggets organization had prioritized – unlocked and tested in the postseason.

“I have no doubt in my mind that our young core is as good as anybody in the NBA,” Connelly told Altitude Sports Radio on media day last September. With palpable adulation for the maturity and erudition of the players, he continued, “In an environment that oftentimes creates dysfunction...we have the most functional locker room I've ever seen.”

This team-oriented ethos is central to the culture-cultivating approach the Nuggets have taken to roster building, and given the success it has produced with their current crop of players, the risk-reward analysis of shaking the tree with trade moves which could potentially upset the balance would seem to favor making no trades, or at least only minimal moves at the deadline.

Practicing Patience and Shunning the Skipping of Steps

In addition to a proactive desire to keep the band together, the Nuggets’ front office and ownership have made it expressly clear that a critical element of their team-building philosophy is to avoid circumventing the natural development process by taking shortcuts.

Connelly hit on this point in an interview with Altitude prior to the 2017 NBA draft, saying that “with so many young, talented guys, you don’t want to skip a step into next year and lose the battle.”

Speaking with Altitude Sports Radio following Denver’s disappointing end to the season last April as they missed the playoffs by one game for the second consecutive year, Nuggets president and governor Josh Kroenke echoed a similar wariness of front offices' temptation “where [they] might want to shortcut [their] growth curve.”

Addressing the great pressure that the media and fans can place on organizations to improve at perhaps an unrealistically fast pace, Kroenke reflected that “The hardest thing in pro sports is staying patient. You make moves, and start charting an organizational direction and it takes years to manifest.”

For one thing, this would allow more time for further evaluation of young, developing role players, hopefully with the team under healthier, more ideal circumstances than the first half of the season provided, in the lineups Coach Malone envisioned for a fully active roster.

Additionally, waiting in the wings are rookie draft picks Michael Porter Jr. and Jarred Vanderbilt, neither of whom have played a game for the Nuggets yet due to injuries of their own (and as I covered for Forbes, it was recently reported that Porter could miss the entire season). As this duo should effectively become 2019 offseason additions, it could alleviate concerns, if the Nuggets have any, that they might lose forwards Trey Lyles (whose contract Denver did not extend by the October 15 deadline) and Tyler Lydon (whose third-year option they declined) to the free agent market.

But yet another factor which could more decisively temper the Nuggets’ desire to trade at the deadline is that a valuable mid-season in-house reinforcement could soon be on the way.

The (Possible) Return of Isaiah Thomas

Further softening any sense of urgency Denver might have approaching the trade deadline is the potentially eminent debut of their biggest free agent acquisition last summer, two-time All-Star point guard Isaiah Thomas, who may or may not make his Nuggets debut in mid-February, depending on who you ask.

Over the weekend, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski dropped an article reporting that “there's hope among Thomas and the Nuggets organization that he could return as soon as a Feb. 11-13 homestand” and that according to his league sources, “There's strong confidence that he will return no later than the first game after the All-Star break on Feb. 22.”

This came shortly on the heels of a cryptic tweet Thomas himself posted on Twitter, with a message that simply read, “25 days.”

It's now been deleted.

But...

As the date of Thomas’ tweet (screen captured in my tweet above) was January 17, 25 days from then just happens to coincide with February 11, the early date on the possible return window cited by Wojnarowski (“Woj” for short).

As reported in the Denver Post, however, Malone was quick to push back on the report, quipping “Don’t believe everything you read” prior to the Nuggets’ January 19 home win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, and going on to make no bones about disputing the ESPN report:

I don’t know where these leaks come from... There’s no timeline. There’s nothing (that has) been set about February... You’ll see him when he’s ready to play.

Could Woj have received bad intel? It is certainly possible. Early in the season on November 4 he likewise tweeted a return date for Thomas as “sometime in December,” a report which obviously did not in fact come to fruition.

Where the truth lies in this “he said, he said” situation has yet to be revealed, but if Thomas will indeed be able to return to action in the near future, there should be confirmation of it relatively soon. And if there is at least a kernel of truth to Woj’s report of his return, inasmuch as he will be available in time for the Nuggets to get him into game shape by the playoffs, then Isaiah Thomas may well end up as Denver’s most significant, or perhaps only trade deadline “acquisition” heading down the final stretch of the season.

If so, Thomas’ arrival will raise a host of other questions regarding how, and to what extent he will be integrated into Denver’s rotation. But even off the bench and in the locker room he has made his impact felt with his vocal leadership, and given that along with his scoring punch and veteran presence on the court, the Nuggets organization, and Malone in particular, will certainly welcome him with open arms.

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I am a Colorado native living in Japan, and a contributor to Forbes writing about the Denver Nuggets. Follow me on Twitter at @JoelRushNBA, where questions and comments are welcome!

I have covered the Nuggets since 2005, writing for Forbes, BSN Denver, Roundball Mining Company, and my blog The Nuggets Den. “Passing makes two people happy. Scoring only makes one person happy.” --Nikola Jokic. You can find me on Twitter at @JoelRushNBA, where my views ar...